Is Joomla Still Relevant in 2020? Why Users Still Love It!

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Joomla is a content management platform that has been around almost as long as WordPress. Despite its age, Joomla isn’t seen as the supporting platform for sites across the web very often. Does this make it less relevant as a content management platform in 2020? Why is it seeing a dropping market share? Is it good for anything nowadays? Let’s look a little deeper into the complicated situation surrounding Joomla’s development.

Joomla’s slow progress in crafting a more user-friendly UI could be partially to blame for its lagging behind in market share. However, in recent years Joomla has not only been placing second to WordPress, but it has also started losing what market-share it had. What’s up with that?

One major issue that has presented itself recently in Joomla’s development is a committee-managed, waterfall development life cycle. Contributors feel they have little input or impact on the decision-making process. Unhappy contributors can impact every level of development. It may influence how many volunteers work on the project and the quality of work that they bring to the table.

Another issue that has been present with Joomla development as of late is a lack of cohesive vision. Joomla has lost touch with who its target audience is. With this kind of uncertainty in purpose, feature planning lacks focus. With that said, the CMS has not lost all its appeal in 2020. If you’d like to know why such a project isn’t doomed just yet, read on.

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Many projects would have died out a long time ago if they had these issues, but Joomla presses on. The CMS has carved out a loyal, niche audience that values the CMS for its clean design, speed, simplicity, advanced configuration, and unparalleled web app support. Joomla could arguably target the web app management market with success and ease.

The Joomla Learning Curve: Too Steep To Climb?

How easy is it to learn how to use Joomla? Well, it is undoubtedly easier to learn than Drupal. However, its learning curve is a little steeper than what you’ll find with simple, user-friendly content management platforms like WordPress. Check out this guide if you want to learn how to build a website with Joomla.

Most web hosts offer an auto-installer for Joomla just like they do with WordPress. From there onward, the CMS takes a little time to grow on you. It functions on a system of categories and articles, so you will need to set up a skeletal category and article structure for the website. That is a little different from CMS platforms like WordPress, where you can immediately start uploading content as part of a default organizational tree system.

Thankfully, the article editor for Joomla is almost identical to the editor in WordPress. WordPress users may panic when they see the control panel, however. The options can overwhelm someone new to the platform. Fortunately, there’s a solution for that as well in Joomla’s collection of extensions designed to make customization easier to implement.

Joomla: An Outdated CMS For 2020, Or Just Underappreciated?

Are there any more reasons why Joomla is still appealing to so many web developers in 2020? Consider the following:

• Joomla has an advanced user access and control management system. Drupal remains far above many heads, and WordPress only offers the most basic management tools out of the box. It remains the only major content management platform that features sensible but advanced control panel options.
• Joomla uses modules instead of templates to make it fully versatile with different content types. This feature is what makes it ideal for web app management. It also makes it ideal for managing highly unique and specialized websites, especially websites that rely heavily on web applications.
• Joomla leaves many other content management systems in the dust with its multilingual support. It includes full multilingual support out-of-the-box instead of relying on a third-party plugin to provide it.
• Another area where Joomla’s module-driven structure stands out is in its flexible template system. It is the only CMS besides Drupal that doesn’t lock you into one specific type of website structure with its template system.

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Best Case Uses For Joomla In 2020

If you’re looking for a learnable, scalable, tweakable CMS with snappy performance on mobile and PC, then Joomla is a platform you shouldn’t count out. Though the CMS is experiencing a dip right now, it is still far from being irrelevant or dead. Joomla still caters well to a market that has learned to appreciate its creative balance between user-friendliness, speed, and flexibility.

With the rising threat of web application attacks, 2020 may be the year we see a growing appreciation for Joomla. It is already poised to dominate a new kind of web design market. Other content management platforms will need to commit to many hours of redesign to implement the sort of web application support that Joomla already comes with by default. While it may seem like the underdog now, Joomla may become a new market leader by December if the committee plays their cards right by making web application management its new dominating focus.